I had to drive about 5 hours south of my house today to drop some stuff off for work. My buddy owns a piece of property another 30 mins south of there (about 1/4 mile off water at Baffin Bay) so I figured I would bring my stuff and get a morning hunt in. The property has 3 ponds and all had knee to waist deep water during dove season (Sept - Oct). We get here today and all 3 are bone dry! He has an 8" irrigation well on the property with enough pipe to reach one of the ponds. We moved all the pipe and kicked the pump on about 3PM. This particular pond is about 1/2 a football field in size when full. At 7PM the entire bottom of the pond was covered about an inch deep. We're planning to let it run all night and are guessing it will have 5-6" of water in it when we get up tomorrow morning.

History on the property:

We've hunted it the past two years with good success. We always see a LOT of ducks crossing over it in the morning going from a roosting area to the bay. We didn't get here until late afternoon today so we didn't get to see any ducks passing over but we saw several thousand Sandhills pass over this evening on the same flight path we have always seen in the past so we're hoping that means the ducks are doing similar movements again this year.

Question:

Since the pond has been dry for an unknown time period, do y'all thing it would even be worth trying in the morning to see if we can lure some passing ducks into a spread?

My dad's with me (neither of us know much about duck hunting, but we're learning). We're split on the topic. He wants to pack up and head out early. I say we're here, we might as well give it a shot before heading home...

I'd say sit out there. What if 100s of ducks and geese come to the pond and you miss that? If I get a chance to hunt anything, I'm there!! If you don't see anything, what did you lose? A few hours with your dad in the beautiful outdoors? Doesn't sound like a bad trade off to me.

Thanks for the reply, that's exactly what I was telling dad last night, and what we did this morning. Unfortunately we didn't see a single duck anywhere near us. However we did get a blind built for a later hunt and got some training in on my pup. All in all a great day!

I can't wait for Dec 22 when sandhill season opens for zone C. That place is covered up. I've never shot one myself but I tried some at a friend's house and it's pretty good eating.